Out of the
woods...
...
and onto the plains:
Hominids may have
become bipedal as a
result of their forays
into unfamiliar and dan
gerous environments.
Supporting this idea is
the mosaic nature of
the East African Rift,
where galleries of wood
land-like this one along
the dry Turkwel river
bed-wind across the
great savanna. That simi
lar conditions existed
here four million years
ago is borne out by the
fossil record. The re
mains of forest-dwelling
monkeys, antelope, and
rats were discovered at
Allia Bay in sediments
that also contained
grassland creatures such
as field rats and gerbils.
complete skull, but the season was ending.
On the last weekend Richard flew up to join
us. The previous year he had lost both his legs
following an airplane accident. He walks now
with artificial legs, but his enthusiasm for fos
sils is undiminished. We were applying a pro
tective coat of plaster to a large elephant skull
found earlier. Nzube was with us, even though
he was supposed to be overseeing work at
another site nearby. He was enjoying having
Richard around so much that he hesitated to
leave his side. Finally I insisted Nzube go, and
he headed off.
It was a walk he had taken often, but this
time his route, or perhaps the angle of the light,
might have differed slightly. A few minutes
after he left, Nzube ran back, shouting in
Swahili, "Come quickly. It is wonderful."
I couldn't believe what I saw sticking out of
the sediment-a complete lower jaw and right
next to it a piece of the ear region of a skull. I
hurried back to Richard and asked him if he
would excavate a hominid for me.
Nzube's new fossils resembled those we had
already found that season, showing the same
mixture of chimp, A. afarensis, and unique
features. The smaller canines suggested that
this individual might be female.
The part of the lower jaw that in humans
forms our chins sloped sharply backward.
Afarensis's lower jaw slopes also, but much
less so than this new individual's. Nzube
almost immediately recovered a lower molar
of another individual. This was the third site
in which we had found the remains of more
than one hominid. Perhaps they were the left
overs from some carnivore's meals.
Returning to Nairobi, I was thrilled with the
finds we would report-the most complete
known specimens of a hominid of this age, and
almost certainly a new species older than
Lucy. Moreover, we could argue convincingly
that this animal was bipedal.
Then came the news that my colleague Tim
White, a paleoanthropologist at the Univer
sity of California, Berkeley, was also about to
announce a new hominid species from a site
called Aramis in Ethiopia that was even
The FarthestHorizon